The Music of Hildegard von Bingen

By Olivia Carter Mather

Created on 25 November 2002 and updated 15 June 2003

Introduction

Hildegard of Bingen is widely known for her extraordinary
works and her accomplishments in the fields of music, poetry,
theology, the visual arts, and the natural sciences. Her compositions
and writings have experienced a revival in recent years in conjunction
with an increased interest in women's studies among scholars
in a variety of disciplines. Scholars have published new editions
and facsimiles of her works, and professional performers of medieval
music such as Sequentia, Gothic Voices, and Anonymous 4 have
recorded her music. This article is a general introduction to
her music according to genre.

Biography

Hildegard of Bingen was born to noble parents in the year
1098 at Bermersheim in the Rhineland as the youngest of ten children
and was offered to the church as a small child. She claimed to
have visions at a very young age, and this may have encouraged
her parents to dedicate her special abilities to religious life.
It was in 1106, at the age of eight, that Hildegard was sent
to the Benedictine monastery of Disibodenburg under the care
of Jutta of Spanheim, the abbess of a very small community of
nuns under the oversight of Benedictine monks. Hildegard received
only a basic education from Jutta, probably learning how to recite
from the Latin Psalter. We have little information about Hildegard's
exact education but she lamented that she lacked advanced formal
training in Latin, the Bible, or musical notation.

In 1113 Hildegard took the veil and lived an unremarkable
life at Disibodenburg until 1136. In 1136, Jutta died and Hildegard
was named abbess. Hildegard saw visions and heard voices throughout
her life, but according to her account in Liber scivias domini
("Know the Ways of the Lord," hereafter Scivias),
it was soon after becoming abbess that she was told to "tell
and write" what she saw and heard. Because her visions were
frequently accompanied by illness, she was often bedridden just
before she began to write. In 1141 Hildegard began writing her
first work, Scivias, a record of her visions, after receiving
support from her friends and permission from the Bishop of Mainz
to do so. She described her visions as "the reflection of
the living Light."

In 1147-48, Pope Eugenius III visited nearby Trier and heard
of Hildegard's special gift of prophetic visions. He sent delegates
to Disibodenburg to obtain a copy of her partially completed
Scivias which he then read. He blessed Hildegard's endeavor
and commanded her to continue writing her visions. She finished
the Scivias in 1151, after ten years of work.

Recognition from the pope increased Hildegard's popularity
throughout the region and attracted people to Disibodenburg.
Hildegard's prophetic abilities as well as her powers of healing
and exorcism drew people to her. Not only did pilgrims come to
the monastery to visit, but women also came to join the community
of nuns. Lay people, clergy, and political leaders increasingly
sought her advice and help, including Frederick Barbarossa and
Odo of Soissons, master of theology at Paris. Odo's letter of
c. 1147 to Hildegard praises her prophetic abilities and compositions:
"It is reported that, exalted, you see many things in the
heavens and record them in your writing, and that you bring forth
the melody of a new song, although you have studied nothing of
such things" (Newman, Voice of the Living Light,
244-245).

In the late 1150s and early 1160s Hildegard traveled on preaching
tours to Cologne, Liège, and several towns in the region
of Swabia. These journeys would have been very difficult for
a sixty-year-old woman, possibly involving travel by foot. It
was unusual enough for a nun to travel and preach to monasteries,
but even more remarkable was the fact that Hildegard preached
in public to many of the towns she visited.

One of the most important events of Hildegard's life was her
decision to move her nuns away from Disibodenburg in 1148. She
was told in a vision to reestablish Rupertsberg, an abandoned
monastery on the Rhine a day's journey from Disibodenburg. Hildegard's
decision met with much resistance from the monks of Disibodenburg,
church hierarchy, and even her own nuns. By 1150, however, the
building at Rupertsberg was complete and Hildegard moved her
nuns from the comfortable and abundant Disibodenburg to the desolate
and infertile mountain home of Rupertsberg, outside the town
of Bingen. In 1165 she founded yet another convent across the
Rhine at Eibingen. Hildegard continued to write and to lead her
nuns until her death in 1179. Alist of
Hildegard's writings is included at the end of this article.

General Aspects of Hildegard's Music

Hildegard's musical and poetic compositions are divided into
two large works: the Ordo Virtutum ("The Play of
the Virtues") and Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum
("Symphony of the Harmony of Celestial Revelations,"
hereafter Symphonia). The Ordo Virtutum is a morality
play set to music. The Symphonia is a collection of 77
songs for the Mass and Office including antiphons, responsories,
sequences, hymns, a Kyrie, and an Alleluia (alist
of the songs of the Symphonia is included at the
end of this article).

Hildegard's music was largely ignored by musicologists until
recently in part because of its apparent difference from other
music of the Middle Ages. Even though she is one of the few medieval
composers we can identify by name, she was not originally included
in music textbooks perhaps because her unique style was difficult
to reconcile with much of medieval music and music theory. Hildegard's
musical vocabulary includes extremely wide vocal ranges (up to
two octaves), large leaps, and florid melodies. A few key gestures
characterize her melodic passages, most importantly, the open
ascending fifth. Hildegard built pieces around all four possible
finals (d, e, f, and g) and two cofinals (a and c), but e 
a mode often described as unstable in medieval music  is
the most common modal center of her music. The ascending fifth
is most common in pieces on d, e, and a.

Earlier Hildegard scholars such as Ludwig Bronarski and Joseph
Schmidt-Görg analyzed Hildegard's music in terms of "motivic
variation." In many of Hildegard's pieces, short melodic
fragments appear in the opening phrases and are repeated throughout
the piece. The fragments vary with repetition and do not necessarily
appear in a pattern or in regular intervals throughout the piece.
These musical motives are  besides mode and genre 
some of the most distinguishing markers of Hildegard's style.

Hildegard's Symphonia and Ordo Virtutum were
connected to her theological writings and everyday responsibilities
as an abbess in a larger religious program for her nuns. Her
texts illustrate her theology and were written in response to
local concerns; often they praise regional saints or deal with
issues particularly relevant to a community of women striving
to keep vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. They served
to teach and encourage the women under her care while providing
new musical material for the nuns to sing at Mass, Office, and
possibly on special occasions.

Hildegard's music has also been interpreted in terms of female
sexuality and the homosocial environment of the monastery. In
his recent book, Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture:
Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer, Bruce Holsinger argues that
not only the texts but Hildegard's melodies were an expression
of sexuality centered around the female body, womb, and virgin
community. The act of singing Hildegard's music would have connected
the worship of God with the physical pleasure of singing as an
enactment of sexual fulfillment through God's love. Holsinger
locates this virginal sexuality in the open fifths and wide leaps
of Hildegard's melodies: their "openness" represents
the womb and their movement represents the "wind of pleasure,"
an erotic movement in the womb that originates with God's speech,
as described in Hildegard's Causae et curae and in the
sixth book of Liber vitae meritorum. Some scholars have
difficulty making such direct connections between Hildegard's
music and a specific kind of sexuality since, as with most medieval
music, we have limited sources from the time period that interpret
chant positively in terms of sexuality. However, Holsinger's
framing is certainly an intriguing one that will perhaps encourage
more scholars to explore the context of Hildegard's music and
its possible meanings.

Manuscript Sources of Hildegard's Music

There are two main manuscript sources of Hildegard's music:
Dendermonde, St.-Pieters-&- Paulusabdij, Codex 9 ("Dendermonde")
and Wiesbaden, Landesbibliothek, Hs. 2 ("Riesenkodex").
Together they contain all 77 songs of the Symphonia as
well as the Ordo Virtutum. Aside from Dendermonde and
the Riesenkodex, four other manuscripts contain fragments of
Hildegard's music and poetry: Vienna, Nationalbibliothek, Cod.
881, 963, and 1016; and Stuttgart, Landesbibliothek, Cod. Theol.
Phil. 253.

Dendermonde contains Hildegard's Liber vitae meritorum,
57 songs of the Symphonia, and Liber viarum domini
("Book of the Ways of the Lord") by Hildegard's friend
and contemporary, Elisabeth of Schoenau. (Elisabeth of Schoenau
is discussed in Garber's ORB article on Medieval
German Women Writers.) Several folios are missing from the
Symphonia section, so Dendermonde originally contained
several more songs of the Symphonia. The manuscript was
copied at Rupertsberg in the 1170s for the monks of Villers who
requested it, and it is likely that Hildegard supervised its
production herself.

The Riesenkodex was copied in the 1180s, just after Hildegard's
death in 1179. The nuns of Rupertsberg probably compiled the
Riesenkodex as part of their request for Hildegard's canonization
since it contains all of her theological writings, 75 songs of
the Symphonia, and the Ordo Virtutum.

The most interesting difference between Dendermonde and the
Riesenkodex (other than the greater coverage of Hildegard's music
in Riesenkodex) is the order of the songs of the Symphonia
in both sources. In Dendermonde, songs to the Virgin Mary are
placed before those to the Holy Spirit and Trinity, and
Saint Disibod, a local saint, is paired with Saint John as an
Apostle. The Riesenkodex, by contrast, places songs to Mary after
those to the Holy Spirit, and local saints are grouped either
as "Confessors" (a category not as important as "Apostles")
or simply as "Saints." The order of the songs in the
Riesenkodex is much more orthodox (and thus more appropriate
to send to higher church authorities as part of a canonization
request) while the layout of Dendermonde reflects the importance
of Mary and local saints to the Rupertsberg community.

In his article entitled "The Composition of Hildegard
von Bingen's Symphonia," Peter Dronke points out
another difference between the two manuscript sources: the emphasis
on chant type in the ordering of the Riesenkodex. Roughly the
first two-thirds of the songs in the Riesenkodex are antiphons
and responsories, while the remaining songs are mostly sequences
and hymns. The compiler followed this classification even if
it meant dividing songs with similar subject matter. For instance,
antiphons and responsories to St. Rupert appear earlier in the
source--in the section of "Songs to the Celestial Hierarchy"--while
the sequence devoted to him appears in the last section of the
Riesenkodex.

Sequences

Of Hildegard's 77 songs, seven of them are sequences. The
sequence is a chant of the Mass sung between the Alleluia and
the Gospel. Sequences were probably first composed in the ninth
century, and by the eleventh century were widely sung in the
Western liturgy until the liturgical reforms of the Council of
Trent (1545-63). Until changes in the late twelfth century, the
sequence was loosely characterized by paired vesicles, two lines
of text set to the same musical line. Words did not necessarily
rhyme and the lengths of lines varied from pair to pair. Sequence
texts were newly composed and while often based on Biblical topics,
were not directly derived from Scripture in the same way as other
chants of the Mass.

The texts of Hildegard's sequences draw upon three sources:
the Bible, Hildegard's own theology, and the vitae of
local saints. Most (all but "O ignis Spiritus Paracliti"
and "O virga ac diadema") are constructed from material
of all three sources. The sequences are dedicated to specific
local or regional saints who are then compared with Biblical
events or concepts. For instance, "O Ierusalem" praises
St. Rupert, supposedly the original but perhaps legendary original
founder of the monastery of Rupertsberg. When Hildegard refounded
Rupertsberg with Rupert as its patron saint, it had been in ruins
since its sack by Normans in c. 882. "O Ierusalem"
praises St. Rupert, describing him as a building, specifically
the beautiful city of celestial Jerusalem. Thus Hildegard used
a building metaphor to connect a local saint and monastery with
heaven as described in the book of Revelation. Not only did she
praise St. Rupert, but she encouraged her nuns at St. Rupertsberg
by comparing their city (the monastery itself) to the heavenly
city and reminding them of their future citizenship.

Similarly, Hildegard addressed issues of virginity in "O
Ecclesia," where she compares a local saint, the virgin
Ursula, to the church in general, ecclesia. According
to legend, Ursula was a noble woman who made a pilgrimage to
Rome with a group of 11,000 virgin companions, only to be martyred
by Huns upon their return. Regional devotion to Ursula increased
in the early twelfth century when a mass grave believed to be
that of Ursula and her companions was found near Cologne. In
"O Ecclesia," Hildegard encouraged the nuns under her
care  her own virgin friends  by explaining how Christian
virginity ultimately defeats Satan, just as the Christian church
will finally reign victorious with Christ.

The text of "O Ecclesia" draws heavily on imagery
from Song of Songs, an Old Testament book of Hebrew love poetry.
The two main characters of the book are the "Lover,"
the husband who initiates lovemaking as he praises his wife's
beauty, and the "Beloved," his wife who responds in
turn with words of adoration and affection. Christian interpretation,
especially in the Middle Ages, views the Lover as Christ and
the Beloved as the Church. Thus Song of Songs becomes a metaphor
for the love between Christ and the Church. Hildegard's references
to imagery from the book were therefore very useful for reminding
her nuns of their status as Christ's Beloved.

In creating text and music for her sequences, Hildegard followed
many typical characteristics of the sequence genre while still
finding space to express her own musical style and particular
historical situation. Like other sequences of the twelfth century,
Hildegard's texts were set in a mixed manner: each sequence contains
examples of syllabic, neumatic, and melismatic text setting (with
one, several, or many notes per syllable, respectively).

Regarding form, most of her sequences are based on the paired-line
structure, but none follow the common outline x AA BB CC DD y.
The main body of a sequence in this traditional form is made
of poetic couplets, the two lines of the pair being set to the
same musical phrase. These two lines of text would often match
each other in accent placement and number of syllables, so the
music could simply be repeated note for note. At the beginning
and end of the sequence there would usually be a single line
of text, each set to their own musical phrase.

Most of Hildegard's sequences are generally based on a paired
structure with single opening and closing lines, but none adhere
to it exactly. For example, the form of "O presul vere civitatis"
is AA BB CC DD EE FF and that of "O Ierusalem"
is AAA BB CC DD E F G H I J. Also, her text pairs almost
never have the same number of syllables, so the music of the
first couplet line varies for the second couplet line.

Since there was no musical mode particular to the genre, Hildegard's
sequences do not all fit into any one modal category. One sequence,
"O presul vere civitatis" steps outside of the traditional
eight-mode system and ends on c. Because c was not used as a
final for much sacred medieval music and was not considered a
legitimate mode by many theorists, it is possible that the sequence
was simply transposed from f. The purpose of the transposition
may have been to aid in notation and copying, or to place the
music in an appropriate range for the female voices for whom
it was written.

Hildegard's melodic style in these pieces is characterized
by large intervals (often a fifth) and wide ranges (as large
as an octave plus a fifth). In "O Ecclesia" she begins
with a rising open fifth from a to e, followed by an ascending
fourth to a, all on the syllable "O." The use of rapid,
annunciatory leaps such as these, often at the beginning of phrases,
is common throughout Hildegard's oeuvre and is one of
the stylistic aspects that distinguishes her music from that
of her contemporaries. In "O Ecclesia" in particular,
almost every line begins with an open fifth, in contrast to cadences
that are made of clusters of pitches only a whole or half step
apart. Since "O Ecclesia" does not fit the traditional
paired structure but is made of a series of different single
musical lines, Hildegard provides musical consistency through
common opening motives and closing cadences. In all of her sequences,
almost every melodic line is a complete musical statement that
cadences on the final in a common closing gesture (for instance,
by approaching the final from a whole step below or half step
above).

Other Chants for the Mass

Besides the seven sequences, Hildegard wrote two other songs
for use in the Mass: a Kyrie and an Alleluia. The Kyrie is one
of five Ordinary chants in the Mass (the others being the Gloria,
Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei), having a set text that could
be combined with different melodies. The text of the Kyrie is:

Hildegard's setting is in many ways a textbook example of
a Kyrie. It is highly melismatic, has a range of more than an
octave, employs large leaps, and includes descending scale passages
of several notes. It is interesting that these characteristics
are also attributes of Hildegard's music more generally and that
the Kyrie as a genre fits her compositional style. The musical
structure of Hildegard's Kyrie setting is AAA BBB CCC',
one of the most common Kyrie forms. One of the piece's most unique
features is its modality in relation to Hildegard's other music:
it is her only musical work in the f mode.

Hildegard's Alleluia, "O virga mediatrix," was written
for the Virgin Mary and would have been sung in the Mass after
the Gradual and before the sequence or Gospel. Alleluias are
chants of the Proper of the Mass and are made of the "Alleluia,"
jubilus, and verse. The first musical phrase is set to the word
"Alleluia." This is followed by a lengthy melisma called
the jubilus, sung to the final syllable of the word "Alleluia."
The verse is often a Psalm verse or, in Hildegard's case, a newly
composed text. In most cases, the Alleluia and jubilus are repeated
after the verse. The typical musical style of Alleluias is melismatic,
and often the verse and Alleluia share musical material. While
some Alleluias have a very small range (a sixth), others have
wider ranges. Many have descending passages of several notes
like the melismatic Kyrie. Hildegard's Alleluia is also melismatic
and segments of the verse are restatements or variations of melodic
material from the music that sets the word "Alleluia."
Hildegard also included descending scalar passages of four, five,
and six notes.

The imagery of Hildegard's Alleluia text is very characteristic
of her poetry in general and deals with one of her favorite topics:
the triumph of the Virgin and her body. The translation is from
Barbara Newman's critical edition of the Symphonia.

As the abbess of about twenty nuns, Hildegard was especially
concerned with edifying her friends and encouraging them to remain
chaste. As in her sequence "O Ecclesia," Hildegard
celebrates a virgin's ultimate victory over evil through steadfast
sexual purity. Hildegard's depiction of Christ as a flower and
the Virgin's influence upon nature are part of Hildegard's theology
and her poetic style.

Hymns

Hymns are probably one of the oldest forms of Christian chant.
We know very little about their music before musical notation,
but Christians were singing them by at least the second century.
They were not a regular part of the Mass, but would have been
sung at Offices and special occasions. Like sequences, hymns
texts are newly composed material. However, hymns texts are more
often in a poetic form with a regular number of lines (four or
six) and a regular number of syllables per line (typically eight).
Each stanza is set to the same music with a form such as ABCD,
AABC, or AABA.

Hildegard's five hymns do not fit the traditional hymn pattern.
While they are obviously divided into stanzas, none have a regular
number of lines per stanza or syllables per line. As a result,
new music must be created for each stanza. Also, each individual
stanza is through-composed, lacking internal repetition of complete
lines. Hildegard achieves a sense of unity in these pieces through
motivic repetition. In hymns such as "Ave generosa"
and "O ignee Spiritus" many stanzas begin with an ascending
fifth, even though the remaining music of each stanza is not
repeated.

One of Hildegard's hymns, "Mathias sanctus," even
adopts paired melodic lines and therefore is musically more like
her sequences than her other hymns. Most editors have labeled
it a hymn because the Riesenkodex gives this indication and because
it ends with a florid "Amen" just as her other hymns
(and none of her sequences).

Overall, these five pieces by Hildegard are syllabic with
occasional melismas of four or five notes, usually descending
scalar passages. Textually, the hymns illustrate Hildegard's
theology and poetic style by employing imagery of gemstones,
trees as genealogical stems, nature in general, the power of
chastity, and comparisons between saints and Scriptural figures.
Two hymns are for saints, two are Marian, and one is to the Holy
Spirit.

Antiphons

Antiphons are short additions to the chant liturgy that are
sung with chants for both the Mass and Office. They are sung
before and after Psalms, or in between each verse of a Psalm.
The chants of the Mass that include antiphons are the Introit,
Communion, and Offertory. In the Office, antiphons simply accompany
the singing of the Psalms (the entire book of Psalms is sung
through each week). Antiphons are usually very short  sometimes
only one line  and syllabic. There are thousands of antiphons
in the repertory of the Western Liturgy, many of which can be
reduced to a small group of standard melodies. Antiphons that
stand independent of Psalms or other chants are called "votive
antiphons." They are usually longer and more elaborate than
Psalm antiphons or antiphons that accompany chants of the Mass.

Hildegard's forty-three antiphons fall into three categories:
Psalm antiphons (28), votive antiphons (14), and gospel antiphons
(1). Her pieces were written to God the Father, Christ, the Holy
Spirit, the Virgin Mary, and various saints, virgins, and apostles.
Typically, Psalm antiphons are short and syllabic while votive
antiphons are longer and more elaborate, but this is not true
of Hildegard's pieces. Her votive and Psalm antiphons are sometimes
stylistically difficult to distinguish, both kinds having characteristics
in common. While many of her votive antiphons are longer and
more melismatic than many of her antiphons, there are many exceptions.
For instance, the votive antiphon "O pastor aminarum"
is short and another votive antiphon "O virgo Ecclesia"
is not very melismatic. Also, many of her Psalm antiphons are
longer and more melismatic than those in the standard repertory.

The only consistent distinguishing factor between Hildegard's
votive and Psalm antiphons is the presence or absence of differentiae.
A differentia is a group of tones at the end of an antiphon
that help singers smoothly join the end of the antiphon to the
following Psalm. Therefore, antiphons with differentiae
are meant to be sung with a Psalm and those without differentiae
are meant to stand alone. Because all of Hildegard's antiphons
are often stylistically similar, those that have differentiae
are simply labeled Psalm antiphons and the rest are labeled votive
(the single gospel antiphon is indicated as such). Probably the
most well-known antiphon of Hildegard's among scholars is "O
quam mirabilis," whose musical structure has been much debated
regarding Hildegard's compositional process (see Pfau, 60-83;
and Bain, 15-30 and 31-48 in the bibliography).

Responsories

Responsories are chants sung at Offices after readings or
recitations from the Bible and they may be divided into two categories.
The "Great" Responsories sung at Matins follow Lessons
(a long section from Scripture) and are long and elaborate. The
"short" responsories of the Compline and Lesser Hours
of the Office follow Chapters (a single verse from Scripture)
and are short chants in comparison to the Great Responsories.
Responsories consist of a respond and a verse, followed by a
repeat of all or part of the respond. The end of the respond
often contains a lengthy melisma in an AAB form.

Hildegard's responsories appear to be Great Responsories and
are her most melismatic and florid chants. They are characterized
by wide ranges, rapid changes between low and high ranges, and
descending scalar passages of six or more notes. Like other responsories,
several of Hildegard's have a long melisma at the end of the
respond in AAB form. Her "O vos felices radices"
has one melisma of eighty-one notes and several descending scalar
passages of seven or more notes.

Symphoniae

In addition to sequences, hymns, antiphons, and responsories,
Hildegard wrote two songs which she seems to have called "symphonia."
These represent a type not otherwise represented in medieval
music and should not be confused with the larger group of her
songs of the same name: these two "symphoniae" are
simply two pieces in her Symphonia. "O dulcissime
amator" and "O Pater omnium" are symphonies of
virgins and widows, respectively, and were probably written for
these two types of women at the abbey. The texts of both represent
the struggles involved in vows of chastity and symbolic marriage
to Christ, the symphonia for virgins relying heavily on imagery
from the Song of Songs.

Both are neumatic and in the e mode, the mode used most by
Hildegard. Musically, the symphoniae resemble Hildegard's hymns
more than any of her other pieces. Their texts are set neumatically
like those of the hymns (unlike the highly melismatic responsories)
and are structured by several long, un-paired lines of text (making
them longer than antiphons), giving them the textual structure
of her hymns. The pieces were probably meant to stand alone 
not as tropes or additions to another chant  because of
the coherent nature of their texts that only refer to the Trinity,
not to a particular feast day, saint, or other chant.

Hildegard's symphoniae are examples of the complicated relationship
between Hildegard's music and musical genre. Elsewhere in her
larger Symphonia, Hildegard uses generic titles but sometimes
does not adhere to basic characteristics of those genres. This
was not the result of ignorance of conventional composition,
but instead a result of her willingness to adjust conventional
forms to her purposes. With the two symphonia, it seems that
Hildegard's purpose was to provide songs for her nuns from their
perspective about their relationship to their heavenly Husband
and Father. While her antiphons, responsories, hymns, and sequences
incorporate themes of virginity and spiritual marriage, these
genres have particular functions within liturgy and their texts
point to a particular saint or feast day. Therefore Hildegard
may have conceived of the symphoniae as songs free of any official
liturgical function and thus completely devoted to the praise
and contemplation of her nuns' status as brides of Christ.

The Ursuline Office

Nine antiphons, two responsories, a hymn, and a sequence make
up a group of songs devoted to Saint Ursula and were probably
sung at Offices for a feast day of this local saint. As reviewed
in the section on the sequences, Ursula
was a virgin who was murdered with her 11,000 virgin companions
upon their return from a pilgrimage to Rome. She served as an
appropriate saint for Hildegard and her nuns at Rupertsberg,
and perhaps Hildegard's songs to Ursula were part of her religious
program for the women under her care. The songs of the Ursuline
Office tell the story of the virgins and their martyrdom through
themes of virginity, betrothal to Christ, and the blood of Christ.
Hildegard compared Ursula's story to Biblical imagery such as
Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, Christ's sacrifice, and the love
poetry of Song of Songs. Musically the songs are connected by
their use of the open fifth, and every piece is centered on d,
e, or a  modes that are often characterized by the ascending
open fifth.

The Ordo Virtutum

Hildegard's Ordo Virtutum ("The Play of the Virtues")
is a morality play set to music. The work is unique in the history
of medieval drama because its author is known and because it
is one of the earliest morality plays, a type uncommon until
the fourteenth century. A morality play is a play in which the
members of the cast are allegorical, often personifications of
concepts, virtues or vices, as in the well known Everyman.

The main source for the text and music of Ordo Virtutum
is the Riesenkodex. The play includes seventeen solo parts for
female vocalists (sixteen virtues and Anima, a soul), a group
of lamenting female souls, one part for a male soloist (Diabolus,
the Devil), and a group of patriarchs and prophets who appear
only at the very beginning of the play. The story of the play
is about a female soul, Anima, who is tempted by the Devil
but eventually returns to the Christian life with the help of
the Virtues. Each of the Virtues is a female personification
and is given at least one chance to sing a description of her
qualities. Humility, Chastity, and Victory are the most vocal
of the Virtues, Humility being the Queen of the Virtues.

The Ordo Virtutum as it appears in the Riesenkodex
is not divided into scenes or sections, but recent editorial
divisions are useful in understanding the plot of the play. The
play begins with a Prologue that simply introduces the Virtues
to the Patriarchs and Prophets. In Scene One, the chorus of Souls
laments the difficulties of earthly life, but one soul, Anima,
happily celebrates life. By the end of the scene, however, Anima
has become discouraged and decides to turn away from the righteous
life to pursue the world after hearing the persuasive arguments
of Diabolus.

In Scene Two, we are introduced to each of the Virtues: Humility,
Charity, Fear of God, Obedience, Faith, Hope, Chastity, Innocence,
World-Rejection, Heavenly Love, Discipline, Shamefastness, Mercy,
Victory, Discretion, and Patience. The text alternates between
the chorus of all the Virtues and solo statements by each one
in turn.

In Scene Three, the Virtues mourn their lost sheep, Anima,
and eventually convince her to return. Diabolus returns
in Scene Four to taunt Anima and the Virtues, but under
the command of Humility, they bind him and praise God for their
victory. The play concludes with a chorus that summarizes the
history of God's people, including the Creation, Fall of Nature,
and suffering of Christ. The last line exhorts listeners to worshipfully
respond to the events depicted in the play: "So now, all
you people, bend your knees to the Father, that he may reach
you his hand." (Lines 267-69).

Musically, the Ordo Virtutum is like many of Hildegard's
other works: it employs a wide range (about two octaves) and
is mostly neumatic, with several melismatic passages. Several
short, melodic gestures, such as ascending fifths, repeat throughout
the piece. The most striking musical contrast in the play is
the juxtaposition of the part of Diabolus with the rest
of the music. As in other medieval plays, the Devil does not
sing, he only speaks or shouts. The copyist of the Riesenkodex
marked strepitus for his text, indicating a noisy shout.

Audrey Ekdahl Davidson makes many helpful observations about
the music of the play in her article "Music and Performance:
Hildegard of Bingen's Ordo Virtutum." She notes several
instances of correspondence between the words and music in the
parts of Anima and the Virtues. She argues that the variation
in Anima's tessitura highlights her unstable emotions:
higher pitches set feelings of elation while lower ones express
moments of discouragement. Also, Davidson shows how the most
melismatic passages occur in the section of the drama where the
individual Virtues announce themselves. Specifically, the song
"Flos campi," sung by the chorus of Virtues in lines
109-111, is particularly melismatic and, in Davidson's opinion,
one of the musical high points of the entire play. It is also
falls in the center of the work, "like the capstone of an
arch" (Davidson, 14).

One final comment should be made about modality in the Ordo
Virtutum. A definite modal classification for the entire
play is impossible because of its high degree of ambiguity and
alternation between two modes: d and e. The work begins in the
d mode, but most songs of Scene Two end on e. Scenes Three and
Four are characterized by d as final and the d-to-a fifth, but
the last song of the play begins and ends in the e mode.

No records have survived that indicate if or how the Ordo
Virtutum might have been performed in Hildegard's time. Several
scholars have speculated that it may have been presented for
the dedication of the St. Ruberstberg monastery, since important
guests would have been in attendance for the ceremonies. We do
know that Hildegard envisioned possible costumes for each of
the Virtues. In her Scivias, she described the colorful
garb and jewelry of the Virtues, each having a color or design
appropriate to her character.

It seems that the play was written to be performed specifically
by the Rupertsberg nuns, as there were about twenty nuns under
Hildegard's care and eighteen solo parts for women in the play.
Peter Dronke has pointed out that as there was only one man at
Rupertsberg, Hildegard's secretary Volmar, so there is only one
male solo part. The Patriarchs and Prophets only sing two short
songs at the beginning of the play, so a few monks at a neighboring
monastery could have performed these choruses with little rehearsal
time.

A List of Hildegard's Writings

The Visionary Trilogy:

Liber scivias domini (Know the Ways of the Lord)

Liber vitae meritorum (Book of Life's Merits)

Liber divinorum operum (Book of the Divine Works)

Natural Science:

Liber subtilitatum diversarum naturum creaturam (Book
on the Subtleties of Many Kinds of Creatures)

Physica (Also known as Liber simplices medicinae,
Book of Simple Medicine)

Causae et curae (also known as Liber compositae
medicinae, Book of Compound Medicine)

Dronke, Peter. "The Composition of Hildegard
of Bingen's Symphonia." Sacris Erudiri 19
(1969-70): 381-393. [Dronke compares the contents of the Riesenkodex
and Dendermonde manuscript to infer which songs were and were
not originally included in the lost portions of the Dendermonde
source.]

Dronke, Peter. Poetic Individuality in the Middle
Ages: New Departures in Poetry 1000-1150. 2nd ed. London:
Committee for Medieval Studies of Westfield College, University
of London, 1986. [First edition published in 1970. Includes a
chapter on Hildegard's poetry and the Ordo Virtutum. One
of the first studies in English including Hildegard as an important
part of medieval poetry]

Dronke, Peter.Women Writers of the Middle Ages:
A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua to Marguerite Porete.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. [Includes one chapter
on Hildegard's writings]

Fassler, Margot. "Composer and Dramatist: Melodious
Singing and the Freshness of Remorse'" in Voice of the
Living Light: Hildegard of Bingen and Her World. Edited by
Barbara Newman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
[Discusses Hildegard's songs in the context of liturgy and theology]

Flanagan, Sabina. Hildegard of Bingen: A Visionary
Life. London: Routledge, 1989. [A general biography of Hildegard]

Holsinger, Bruce. "The Flesh of the Voice: Embodiment
and the Homoerotics of Devotion in the Music of Hildegard of
Bingen (1098-1179)." Signs 19 (1993): 92-125. [Holsinger
argues that in the Middle Ages music was linked to the body and
sexuality, and that Hildegard's music was part of her expression
of feminine sexuality]

Holsinger, Bruce. Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval
Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2001. [A series of chapters on various topics
that illustrate the connection between medieval conceptions of
music and the body. Includes a chapter on Hildegard which is
an expansion of his Signs article.]

Newman, Barbara, ed.Hildegard of Bingen:Symphonia:
A Critical Edition of the Symphonia Armonie Celestium Revelationem.
Translated by Barbara Newman. Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1988. [A critical edition and translation of all the poetry of
the Symphonia with Newman's comments and helpful introduction.
Also includes an article by Marianne Richert Pfau on the music
of Hildegard's antiphons]

Newman, Barbara. Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard's
Theology of the Feminine. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1987. [Devoted to Hildegard's theology as discussed in
her religious writings]

Newman, Barbara.Voice of the Living Light: Hildegard
von Bingen and Her World. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1998.

Pfau, Marianne Richert. "Hildegard von Bingen's
Symphonia Armonie Celestium Revalationum': An analysis
of musical process, modality, and text-music relations."
Ph.D. dissertation: State University of New York at Stony Brook,
1990. [A comprehensive treatment of the songs of the Symphonia
according to style and the modes]

Helpful Hildegard Websites

The following websites are just a few of the many sites devoted
to Hildegard. Many are helpful for more extended biography, discography,
and links.

Hildegard
of Bingen: This extensive site includes links
to several short articles (some in German) on Hildegard's biography,
modern-day Bingen, and Hildegard as a religious figure. Also
includes many links.